We Be Friends is pleased to release the latest from Chicago digital freaknik RXM Reality (né Mike Meegan), a three-part suite of new recordings that follow up on a string of releases on modern luminaries Hausu Mountain and Orange Milk. Packed to the gills with hyper-kinetic arrangements and a deft sense of the line between structure and chaos, WEWEREFRIENDS offers an in-depth review of the artist’s range as a producer and performer, moving through genres and formats at a breakneck pace.


Meegan has producing under the RXM Reality moniker for the past 8 years, honing a textural, labyrinthine vision of digital maximalism, dotting his works with sudden tempo changes, explosions of dissonant noise, and song structures that mine tensions between pop, black metal, breakcore, hip-hop and even the frayed-nerve sonics of contemporaries like Bonnie Baxter, Fire-Toolz and Machine Girl. Having shared the stage with Actress, Laurel Halo, Elysia Crampton, and Eartheater, Meegan’s work sits among a cadre of producers mining a taut interplay between the grammar and sonics of modern club production, noise and pop.


For this release on We Be Friends, Meegan takes this same compositional dynamic, and presses it towards the arc of the album itself. Recorded this past spring, the release opens with a series of turbo-charged pop cuts, a series of micro-mythologies featuring human protagonists finding guidance and power from demonic forces, into contemplative washes of ambience, closing on a series of recent instrumental tunes. Pulling at the tropes and constructs of dance music, noise and pop composition are followed and flouted at turns, twisting the viewer on their ear at a moment’s notice.


Each recording is a world in and of itself, with lyrics painting the emotional landscapes and internal desperation of its characters, rather than seeking an externalized story. Drawing on the subtle emotional heft of classic country, tracks like “Days Go By,” the album’s opening track, describes the loss of a modern country crooner’s soul, drifting through a haze of nostalgia into the arms of satan, soundtracked by the haunting call of pitch-shifted vocals and chiming guitars that eventually bloom into digital masses of detuned synth arpeggios and booming kicks. Other tracks, like “RIGHT WHERE I NEED U” or “COLD TOPO,” turn the record into a more club-oriented direction, dotting tracks with colossal explosions of juggled samples and dense percussion interplay that would fit perfectly amongst the releases of modern British club labels like DECISIONS or AD93. In its more contemplative moments, like “ALCOHOLIC,” Meegan fills space with lush pads and chord progressions that flow between moments of dark dissonance and harmonious reverie, a sort of microcosm for the club and pop arrangements that bookend the record.


Drawing on this hyper-loaded grammar, any and all available influences are twisted through Meegan’s kaleidoscopic production style. Moving across this landscape of gnarled and twisted breaks, ominous pads and ghostly vocals, WEWEREFRIENDS is a meditation on the limits and language of music, tearing at the seams, and haunted by demons, hell-bent on pushing music into new realms.


The album is out Sept. 24th, 2021